


P: Faded Daffodil

by viceversa



Series: Soulmates A-Z [16]
Category: NCIS
Genre: Angst, F/M, Flower Language, Soulmate AU, Soulmate-Identifying Marks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-20
Updated: 2021-03-20
Packaged: 2021-03-26 10:07:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,229
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30104289
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/viceversa/pseuds/viceversa
Summary: p...assionflower (a type of flower soulmates have planted somewhere beneath their skin. Upon meeting their soulmate it will sprout through the skin and fully blossom as they reach the furthest point of their relationship. when a soulmate passes, the flower blooming from the other person does also).-“I can’t take it! It jus’ keeps gettin’ bigger, Grace. I don’t-““Tell me Popeye, can’t what?”“I don’t want another damn soulmate!”
Relationships: Jethro Gibbs/Jacqueline "Jack" Sloane
Series: Soulmates A-Z [16]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2149590
Comments: 12
Kudos: 26





	P: Faded Daffodil

**Author's Note:**

> Note: Daffodil: Respect, Regard, Unrequited Love, You're the Only One  
> Daisy: innocence, simplicity and joy to happiness, good luck and new beginnings  
> Also, highly recommended that you just listen to Nat King Cole’s “Smile” on repeat during this.  
> I've warned you about the angst.

It didn’t take Jack long to figure out her flower bloomed after meeting Gibbs. She was a little thrown at first because it began to open up after she started at NCIS in a building full of people who could be her soulmate, but as her relationship with Gibbs grew it became obvious that her daffodil matched one somewhere on his body. 

The outline of a bud had been on her hip since she could remember, a vibrant green tattoo that just peaked over her jeans. It was a promise of a future with someone - a meeting of souls that was said to be romantic and fulfilling. Jack believed in that idea, even through the trauma of her adulthood and all the horrors she’d witnessed in the world. Her bud would someday begin to bloom, and she would have someone to trust fully. 

And while she hadn’t expected to be in her early fifties with a bud still sitting on her hip, Jack didn’t feel like she’d missed her chance. The new position at NCIS was the catalyst that began to open her flower, and week by week a little more bright yellow peeked through the green. 

The process was slow, but so was getting to know someone in a way that was meaningful. As she and Gibbs talked and opened up to one another - trusting each other with details of their past, things they’d been through and done - the daffodil on her hip bloomed more and more. 

Jack wasn’t sure he knew they were matched or not, but she also didn’t know how to bring it up almost a year and a half into knowing each other. It took a few sessions with Grace to really pinpoint the moment she was ready to open up to someone, and to highlight the fear she held in that decision, but she was determined to confront Gibbs about it. They’d been dancing around a flirtation for too long, and it had become the elephant in the room.

-

This brought Jack to Grace’s office, once again needing to hash out her mixed feelings. She was thinking about letting Grace in on who it was she’d been talking about this whole time, but when she approached the door she heard a loud conversation. Jack nearly backed away before she recognized the voice as Gibbs, and he sounded upset. 

Unable to make herself leave, Jack froze outside the door and listened as his voice raised. 

_“I can’t take it! It jus’ keeps gettin’ bigger, Grace. I don’t-“_

_“Tell me Popeye, can’t what?”_

_“I don’t want another damn soulmate!”_

Jack’s hand flew up to catch the gasp that escaped her mouth at the shouted words, helplessly listening as Gibbs continued. 

_“I’d rather cut off my damn arm, I can’t keep seein’ it in the mirror, big yellow daffodil. No. Shannon - was the one. Shannon was my mate, and the day she died and my daisy turned black I died too. I can’t do that again. I don’t want to.”_

Jack backed away from the door silently, her vision blurred with tears. Shame overwhelmed her, and she had to get out of there before anyone saw her, she had to get out of there before she collapsed in the hallway. Her physical reaction to Gibbs blindsided her.

Somehow, Jack made it back to her car and drove out of the parking lot without conscious thought. She found a place to pull over, unable to drive safely, and managed to take some deep breaths, trying to process.

Gibbs was rejecting the bond. He didn’t want another soulmate, and he’d rather get rid of the mark than have one.

God, it hurt. 

Jack took a few minutes to regulate her body and sent a quick text to Grace, canceling her appointment. She had to go home and take the weekend to figure out what to do, how to react. She’d spent so much time building up her confidence and planning how to talk to him, and it was all for nothing. 

She thanked whatever cosmic force was watching out for her that she overheard that conversation before she talked to Gibbs, or Grace for that matter. It saved her from the mortification, and at least she could deal with the fallout in private. 

She was alone after all.

-

The only solution Jack saw was to wait and not make any moves. If Gibbs changed his mind, or even breathed a hint of either knowing it was her or wanting to talk about the topic, Jack would be open to it. But she wouldn’t push - no more hinting at their elephant, no more flirting on her end. 

Over the following weeks, which quickly turned into months, Jack started to withdraw from their ‘thing’ entirely. She found that if she didn’t put in the extra effort to get him to talk to her, he didn’t talk to her at all. Outside of discussing cases and the sometimes delicate mental state of his team, Gibbs didn’t offer anything beyond a smile and a nod. 

She realized that he had never instigated that kind of talk with her, no effort on his part even in friendship.

Poker night was friendly, but every time spent near Gibbs outside of work was like torture, knowing that it could be more and probably never would be. Soulmates were never mentioned, and Gibbs never gave any outward sign that he cared at all about the flower still in blossom on his arm, still bright yellow on her hip.

Then it began to fade. 

On some level, removed from her own emotions, Jack understands. Gibbs had found his soulmate in Shannon and went through the pain of losing her and his daughter. There was no doubt that he was probably shocked when a new bud formed on his skin. Other people who had second chances like his either accepted them or rejected the chance, and it was understandable that he didn’t want her. 

It didn’t make it fair to Jack, though. Gibbs was her one chance, as far as she knew, and it was over before it could even begin. To tell him about this was too much to ask, so Jack decided not to ask at all. 

_-_

Enough time passed that Jack felt it appropriate to look for other jobs. Necessary, even. It became painful to work so closely with him, unable to bridge that final gap between them. It hurt to see him disregard her existence, both within their friendship and by his rejection of the daffodil. 

When she noticed that the previously bright and happy flower on her hip had begun to wilt, she cried for herself and for Gibbs. For all the pain he’d been through, for all the missed chances, for the fact that he couldn’t see any possibility of happiness in his future. 

She cried again for herself, sad at once again getting screwed over by the universe, her life marked with one tragedy after the next, always falling short of the good. Holy cow, was it hard, to live with it time and time again. Then she picked herself up and steeled her resolve, unwilling to let this crush her life. If he didn’t want her, there was nothing on Earth that she could do to change his mind. 

She interviewed for a few different jobs, considering positions in DC and back in California, torn between wanting to stay close and escape. The job that felt the most right to her happened to be in DC, working with vets struggling with mental health and finding careers suited to them. It felt right, like she would continue to do good in the world and still cut out some of the horror of her current job profiling criminals. 

She gives Leon her two weeks and asks him to keep it quiet, handing over a few files she’d gathered for her potential replacement. He was more understanding that she’d expected, but she thought it was because she was staying close. Jack didn’t want to cut off her ties to NCIS, they were still her family, but she needed the distance to heal. If that meant slowly backing away from her friendships, leaving invites to dinner unanswered, texts left on read, then that was just how it would go. 

Grace reacted with suspicion, voicing her concern at the overall change in Jack’s mood in the past months. Jack chalked it up to needing a change, getting away from a stressful job surrounded in violence. She couldn’t bring herself to tell Grace about Gibbs, about how obviously uncaring he was about her as a person. In his own personal plight to not let anyone close to protect them, he’d ended up hurting her instead. She didn’t want to tell that to Grace, didn’t want to taint her friend’s view of Gibbs, because he deserved better than that. Better than one woman who was broken hearted. 

Jack was committed to making a clean break and doing what Gibbs wanted while protecting herself. 

-

When the time came to pack her office she did it in shifts, taking boxes with her late every night for a week, getting her cabinet moved to her house for the meantime when no one was in the building who would notice. She told the team, Gibbs’ team, that afternoon that it was her last day, and she’d held in more tears when Ellie had hugged her with such force. 

Gibbs was present for her announcement in the bullpen, but as she expected he remained silent, letting her say her goodbyes and promises to keep in touch without so much as a word. Jack tried to not let that get at her, but it served as yet another blow, another reason to leave. 

Which is why it came as a surprise that he appeared at her door that evening, just as she was packing her last box to take home. 

Jack looked up and managed a smile at the sight of him leaning against her door, burning the image into her memory for when she could bear to think about it. 

“Hey, Gibbs.” She motioned him in, not minding how her voice cracked just a hair, how her smile wavered. 

He walked in and stood in front of her desk, silently regarding her as if she was a suspect. She stood there waiting, unwilling to prod him to talk, past exhausted trying after so long. 

Finally he spoke, sending a knife right through her. “Why you goin’, Jack?”

It was something in the way he said it that made her snap, the final straw, and suddenly Jack was crying. Crying in front of her soulmate, who may not even know he was hers but who rejected even the possibility of her. Crying because going through this slow heartbreak for months alone had been torture. 

The front she’d put up in front of her friends, the fake smile she raised for him that wasn’t even questioned. It all came crashing down and for a second, just a second, she thought he might be coming closer to console her. 

But he didn’t. Even as Jack could so clearly feel the possibility between them, the bond reaching out and searching for contact, for reassurance, he withdraws once again and slams up his walls. 

She can see in his face that he doesn’t care, that he has nothing to say even as she cries in front of him, no concern for her reaching out, and she feels something inside her darken irrevocably.

Jack puts up a hand, still in tears and unable to speak, and steps back. With her other hand, she tugged up one side of her sweater, revealing the neglected daffodil on her hip, her eyes searching for anything in Gibbs’ and her hand pressed into her side.

Nothing. A poker face for the ages, no trace of surprise or regret or even disgust. Just, nothing at all. 

“I know it’s too much to ask of you, Gibbs.” Her voice was gravely, her throat hurt from suppressing her sobs, but she had to finally say something. A smile formed on her face, uncontrolled even as she tried to reassure him. “I can’t ask you to love me, I can’t make you change and I don’t blame you. But I can’t ask myself to keep working here either, right beside you. It hurts too much.” Her voice nearly gave out at the end, but she knew he heard her. 

Gibbs didn’t say a word, just stared at the small patch of skin she revealed, the fading flower that inherently connected her to him. 

Against everything she knew, she still gives him a chance to say something, trying not to shake even as she felt like falling apart. But, as he just stood there, she knew this was it. 

“Why I’m leaving, Gibbs?” Despite herself, she let out a watery laugh at the question. “As much as it breaks my heart, I think I might be better off without you.”

With a shaky sigh, Jack found the strength to pick up her things and walk about the door, her vision narrowing and ears straining for any sign of movement from behind her. 

Gibbs lets her go, staring instead at the last piece of Jack left in the office, an ugly elephant painting hanging behind her empty desk.

**Author's Note:**

> 🌻


End file.
